By Jim Day
The Guardian
Generosity is propelling Shelley Stanley forward.
For two years, the 50-year-old Charlottetown woman was immobile.
Her condition — she has a host of illnesses from vascular disease to nerve damage to her legs caused by diabetes — had progressed to the point where she could no longer get around on her own in a manual wheelchair.
She needed to upgrade to a power wheelchair in order to once again hit the pavement rolling. She pursued all avenues she could think of but fundraising and lobbying government both proved fruitless avenues.
“I was really at a loss,’’ she said. “I didn’t know what to do.’’
Then several weeks ago, Ian Hunter, a Pat and the Elephant driver and member of the Parkdale-Sherwood Lions Club, showed up at Stanley’s home at the Kay Reynolds Centre with a power wheelchair in tow.
A woman who wants to remain anonymous donated the chair. The generous gift — the chair is worth thousands of dollars — hit the mark, Hunter recalled with a smile.
“She (Stanley) just started to cry right there,’’ he said. “She was some excited lady.’’
Stanley calls the gift a Godsend. She said all she could do was cry tears of gratitude.
She has been doing her best to make good use of the coveted power wheelchair. Over the past few weeks, Stanley has become a familiar site to motorists as she zips along in her chair along the shoulder of Charlottetown roads, orange flag flapping in the wind.
She rolls out for coffee. She zips out for groceries. She has even powered her chair all the way to Wal-Mart, a good three-kilometre trek from home.
Stanley won’t be deterred by a change in weather, either.
“I have no plans to stay housebound this winter,” she said.
“She got her independence back, that’s the biggest story there,” observed Hunter. “She’s never home.”
Hunter would like to see more people like Stanley receive a generous hand to help get them on the move.
Barry Schmidl, executive director of the P.E.I. Council of the Disabled, said people have had difficulty getting coverage through the provincial Disability Support Program (DSP) to be equipped with an adequate chair to get them around.
“The DSP has not been as fast as they could be, to put it diplomatically, for people who need a chair or adjustments or upgrades to their present chair,” said Schmidl.
“If you can’t use your chair, because you need a power chair and you’re in a manual . . . that’s the same as you (able-bodied person) not being able to use your legs today.”
Schmidl said if people have a wheelchair in good working order that they wish to donate, they could call the P.E.I. Council of the Disabled at 892-9149.
The council in turn will do its part to find an appropriate recipient.
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